


Alive

by sleepyshell



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: AI, Alternate Universe - Les Misérables, Christmas, Drabble, Les Miserables - Freeform, War, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 17:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16815271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepyshell/pseuds/sleepyshell
Summary: Under heavy fire, AI Grantaire still wants to celebrate Christmas.





	Alive

The bombs shook the walls outside, but Grantaire seemed unperturbed, whistling with no sound while putting little strings of lights around the main hideout room.  
“What is this.” Enjolras asked. He already felt a migraine coming.  
“Christmas!” Jehan answered, barely visible under so many tiny lights. Then he got sheepish under Enjolras glare. “I suppose.”  
“Christmas is a human celebration,” Enjolras pointed out the obvious and closed his eyes. “We are at war against the humans if you don’t recall”.  
Grantaire had been awkwardly trying to hang a string near the ceiling with both hands and so had one of the small strings of lights between his teeth for support. He stopped to look at Enjolras. Not glare, just look. The neon shine lit up some cracks in his face, evidenced some of the metal parts.  
He had been one of the last ones found in the landfill of robots, his face a tiny bit of many others’ parts, unmatched and crooked. “Some of us aren’t new generation, Apollo. Some of us have faces made of graveyards”, Grantaire had said.  
Jehan had thought it was poetic. Some of the others had looked down though, even if with discretion.  
Here, illuminated, he looked even more mismatched - one eye too dark, other too light, a crack between his mouth and cheek, between an eyebrow and an ear. Shiny scars. Every part of his being seemed to say “inhuman”.  
Enjolras thought he looked beautiful.  
“Celebrating is not a human thing, it’s a ‘being alive’ thing,” Grantaire said, and the string of lights fell from his mouth, breaking the spell. “I thought this was what you guys were trying to prove? That you are alive.”  
Enjolras paused “And here I thought it was something you didn’t want to be or fight for.” He raised an eyebrow, “ and it’s the middle of war.”  
War was a euphemism for what had been happening. Three more days. It’s what Combeferre had said the walls could still take under the attack.  
Grantaire closed his eyes and even I the somewhat dark room, Enjolras could see him smile “Somedays, even people like me want to feel alive.”  
And here, under heavy fire and the countdown for probable death, Enjolras grinned back.  
Grantaire had said ‘people’.


End file.
